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The state of Telangana began exploring the use of new technologies, such as Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain, Drones, Cloud, etc., way back in 2018. Six years down the line, they are far ahead of many other states in adopting and accelerating the growth of these technologies. While in the last couple of years, the focus has been on identifying use cases that would create an impact, last year, the focus was on using their learnings to build ecosystem enablers.

The year 2023-24 has seen increased adoption of emerging technologies in the state in areas ranging from health care to agriculture to environment and forests. Each of the initiatives has created an impact, improving lives. The setting up of ecosystem enablers further contributed to the growth of the ecosystem.

The approach that they adopted was innovative; their mantra has been “learning by doing,” propelling the adoption of technologies in various departments. To give a glimpse of a few projects that have impacted lives, not just human lives but animal lives as well…

Medicine from the Sky Project: In 2021, just out of the pandemic, the vaccination drive was in full swing in the country. But one challenge the country faced was how to deliver vaccines on time to remote locations with no good connectivity by roads or rails. They conceptualized this project wherein the entire country came together to try out the pilot to deliver vaccines using drones. The startup community, World Economic Forum, the Ministry of Civil Aviation, along with the State government, collaborated to make it successful. Post the pilot implementation, organizations such as ICMR are replicating this in other states, thus improving access to health care in remote areas.

Artificial Innovation for Agricultural Innovation: This is a unique concept developed to explore the use of AI in agriculture. As we all know, agriculture is one sector where technology has not penetrated well. Farmers face acute labor shortage, poor yields, and low returns. Therefore, the income for farmers is not enough to sustain themselves.

They explored the use of emerging technologies across the life cycle of a crop to see if it helps in increasing profits for farmers. They deployed five technologies for the Chilli crop, with the help of Digital Greens, a foundation. Various solutions such as AI for quality essaying, Soil Testing, Market prices have led to a 20% increase in profits for farmers. At the end of the season, the study conducted to measure the impact indicated that farmers got a 20% increase in their profits, impacting seven thousand farmers in Khammam district.
Wildlife Conservation System: The advanced Artificial Intelligence (AI) solution uses state-of-the-art computer vision techniques. The solution aims to accurately detect and identify various wildlife species, track their movements, and map their locations within the forested areas.
Furthermore, the AI system will provide valuable strategic insights for forest beat officers. Through comprehensive data analysis, the solution generates information on animal population dynamics, migration patterns, habitat usage, and potential threats. Armed with this knowledge, officers can make informed decisions and prioritize their conservation efforts effectively.

While the above projects delivered value, they learned that the ecosystem needs certain enablers in sharing data, data governance, evaluation of innovative solutions, and helping startups navigate the regulatory landscape.

These learnings gave birth to ecosystem enablers such as the Agri Data Management Framework, Agriculture Data Exchange Platform (Adex), the blockchain regulatory sandbox, and the asset tokenization framework on standards.

Usually, the traditional approach in eGovernance has been top-down – putting in place enablers, be it infrastructure or regulations. But with new age technologies, it is the other way around; it’s bottom-up – working on use cases or projects, using those learnings to create ecosystem enablers, a new order for the world to improve lives in the disruptive and volatile world.

Views expressed by: L. Ramadevi., Officer on Special Duty (OSD) ITE&C Department, Government of Telangana

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